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I watched ski-equipped airplanes land on ice runways on the lake. In the summer they switch to floats.

There has been major mining operations in this part of Northwest Territories, inmcluding gold and diamonds. Some have been abandoned by their bankrupt coprorate masters, left for the government to clean up the highly toxic waste.

Th effects of Global Warming are real here. The visitors center, built in 1991, was condemned in 2017 because it is sinking into the permafrost below that has thawed and become unstable. And I arrived in Yellowknife for the Snowking’s Winter Festival, and actually met the Snow King himself, standing outside his snow castle, a huge ice structure built each year for the event. We couldn’t go in, however, because it was melting at a rapid rate, and closed for the first time in the 24-year history of the festival.

“This shows the difference a couple of degrees can have,” said the festival’s LaurFrost Busch.

Wonderful dinner with my fellow IABC Fellows on June 10 at the lodge atop Grouse Mountain overlooking Vancouver, British Columbia. What a beautiful way to watch the sun set as the lights of the harbor and environs come on.

*** What to do with some time to kill in Seattle? How about watching the traffic come and go at the Ballard Locks, officially knowns as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Hiram M. Chittenden Locks at the Lake Washington Ship Canal. It was completed in 1917, connecting the waters of Lake Washington, Lake Union, and Salmon Bay to the tidal waters of Puget Sound.